The Trump administration moved on Tuesday to exempt oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from measures to protect endangered whales and other imperiled species.
The Endangered Species Committee, a high-level panel that is often called the God Squad because it essentially holds the power to decide whether a species lives or dies, voted for the move during a brief, closed-door meeting on Tuesday at the Interior Department.
It was the Trump administration’s latest move to weaken the Endangered Species Act, the bedrock environmental law intended to prevent plant and animal extinctions. In November, the administration proposed to relax restrictions on drilling, logging and mining in critical habitats for endangered species across the country.
To justify the sweeping decision on Tuesday, administration officials said that protections for endangered species had hindered oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, which Mr. Trump calls the Gulf of America. They said that lifting these protections would increase domestic energy supplies and bolster national security.
“When development in the Gulf is chilled, we are prevented from producing the energy we need as a country,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the God Squad meeting.
“Recent hostile action by the Iranian terror regime highlights yet again why robust domestic oil production is a national security imperative,” Mr. Hegseth said, although he clarified that these concerns predated the Middle East war and the resulting spike in gasoline prices.
Environmentalists strongly rejected the administration’s claims.
“This is nonsensical,” said Jane Davenport, a senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife, a conservation group. “Oil and gas activities in the Gulf have been proceeding apace, and there is not a shred of evidence that the E.S.A. has resulted in any restrictions on the amount of oil produced there,” she said, referring to the Endangered Species Act.
The act requires federal agencies to ensure that activities like drilling are not “likely to jeopardize the continued existence” of a species. But the God Squad can grant exemptions to the law for activities deemed essential to national security, even if they risk extinguishing a species.
Congress created the obscure but influential committee in 1978. It is led by the interior secretary and composed of five other officials: the agriculture secretary, the Army secretary, and the heads of the Council of Economic Advisers, Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Until Tuesday, the God Squad had convened only three times, and never in the past three decades. Most recently, in 1992, it granted an exemption for logging that would have harmed the northern spotted owl. (The request for the exemption was ultimately withdrawn.)
The Trump administration restricted in-person attendance at Tuesday’s meeting but live streamed the proceedings on YouTube. Dozens of environmentalists joined a protest outside the Interior Department, where they chanted, wore animal costumes and held up handwritten signs.
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Some signs read “Stop the God Squad” and “Save the Endangered Species Act.” Several warned that the exemption for offshore drilling could drive the critically endangered Rice’s whale to extinction.
The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, which spilled millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf, killed more than 20 percent of the Rice’s whale population. According to federal estimates, around 50 Rice’s whales remain on Earth, and they are found only in the Gulf.
Boat strikes pose a major threat to the species’ survival, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. The noise associated with oil and gas exploration can also interfere with the whales’ hearing, which they rely on to communicate and to find food and mates.
In addition to the Rice’s whale, the Gulf is home to the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, the world’s smallest and most endangered species of sea turtle. Its shorelines also provide critical habitat for imperiled birds like the whooping crane and piping plover.
The American Petroleum Institute, a trade group for the oil and gas industry, did not immediately comment on the committee’s decision. But Holly Hopkins, a vice president at the institute, applauded the convening of the God Squad in a recent statement.
“This action is an important step toward ensuring a workable path forward for safe, responsible offshore development while minimizing impacts on endangered species,” Ms. Hopkins said.
Past meetings of the God Squad have included testimony from biologists, ecologists and other scientists who have studied the species at issue. But no outside experts were invited to Tuesday’s meeting.
“What’s happening has virtually no connection with science,” said Barry Noon, an emeritus professor of wildlife ecology at Colorado State University who testified at the 1992 God Squad meeting, where he presented statistical models on the northern spotted owl population.
“One would hope that any decisions we made about a particular species or an entire ecological system would be well-informed by data,” Dr. Noon said.
The God Squad’s decision is final and not subject to a public comment period. But a legal battle over the move is still unfolding.
The Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group, has sued the Trump administration over the convening of the committee. The lawsuit argues that the administration failed to follow procedures required by the Endangered Species Act, such as specifying who requested the exemption.
During Mr. Trump’s first term, the Interior Department made several changes to the way that agencies apply the Endangered Species Act. But on Monday, a federal judge struck down some of those changes, saying the agency had overstepped its authority.
The second Trump administration is now working to finalize fresh changes to the law’s implementation. That process is expected to conclude by the end of the year.
Lisa Friedman contributed reporting.
Maxine Joselow covers climate change and the environment for The Times from Washington.
The post The ‘God Squad’ Waives Environmental Rules for Offshore Drilling appeared first on New York Times.
